Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2010

BUSTED!

Kohji Shiiki

• Nineteen Seibu Railway employees were caught cheating the system out of more than ¥1.5 million in scams involving commuter passes.
• A 44-year-old woman and her male friend in Iwate were detained for fraudulently pretending to be doctors when they tried to get jobs at a local hospital.
• After golfer Yuko Mitsuka was penalized two strokes and fined ¥2 million for slow play at the World Ladies Championship in Ibaraki, she quit the tournament in a huff and then pulled out of her next 11 scheduled events.
• A survey ship from Taiwan was warned by the Coast Guard after sailing over 300km inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the waters off Kagoshima Prefecture.
• Nagano Prefecture’s Matsumoto Juvenile Prison is selling T-shirts designed by the inmates that feature a pair of hands gripping the bars of a jail cell.
• A new book revealed that a former SDF officer was given hush money by the Japanese government because he had inside knowledge of the 1973 kidnapping of future South Korean president Kim Dae Jung by Korean agents in Tokyo.
• Police in Tokyo asked website operators around the country to delete sites that refer users to child porn on the web.

YOU DON’T SAY

• Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Kazuhiro Haraguchi, who bought a new iPad on an official visit to the US, stirred up controversy back home because accessing the internet using the American version of the iPad in Japan violates Japan’s Radio Act. Who knew?
• It was reported that members of Congress in the US are seeking to “pressure Japan into closing a loophole” that allows Japanese spouses of American citizens to abduct their kids back to Japan.
• Researchers at Tohoku University have come up with a method of protecting grain crops from global warming-induced high temperatures by spraying them with a plant hormone.
• Despite its recent difficulties, Toyota said it was back in the black at the operating level for fiscal 2009.
• Speaking from experience, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki called for “a world without nuclear weapons” at a UN conference on international nuclear nonproliferation in New York.

Here & There

• Kiyoshi Nakahata, a former infielder with the Yomiuri Giants, has thrown his ballcap into the political ring, announcing he will run in the upper house election this summer for the Sunrise Party of Japan.
• The remains of 11 World War II forced laborers from Korea were uncovered in northern Hokkaido, near the site of a Japanese Imperial Army airfield.
• The municipal government in Hikone, Shiga Prefecture is capitalizing on the popularity of its Hikonyan mascot, charging folks a 3 percent trademark fee for use of the critter on various products.
• Starting in October, flights to and from New York, LA, Detroit and Hawaii will be able to use Haneda Airport. To which we say: Yippee!
• Nintendo’s profits took a whopping 36 percent hit as sales of Wii and DS game consoles tanked during the past year.
• As if Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama didn’t have enough troubles, someone vandalized his family tomb at Tokyo’s Yanaka Cemetery with yellow spray paint.

THE CRIME FILES

• A 62-year-old “investor” in Chiba says two masked men—one of whom “seemed to be a foreigner,” of course—threatened him with what looked like a pistol before stealing a bag containing ¥135 million in cash as he arrived home.
• It was reported that a 36-year-old woman whose body was stuffed in plastic bags and thrown into a river in Osaka last month had her life insured for “tens of millions of yen” by a couple she had met online and who legally adopted her in February.
• The leader of a criminal gang that sold fake fingerprints and passports to people who hoped to enter Japan illegally was collared in Seoul.
• At a railway station in Gifu, three people restrained a 52-year-old unemployed man who tried to jump in front of a train. The guy did manage to smack his face on the window of the driver’s car, but only suffered a few scrapes and bruises.

THE NOT-SO-FESTIVE SEASON

• Two men died after dropping over 10m from a log pole during a festival at the Suwa Taisha Shrine in Nagano Prefecture. A faulty cable was likely to blame.
• Six people were hurt when a couple of horses went wild during a festival on the streets of Otsu. One guy suffered a broken leg after getting bucked off one of the horses.
• In Ehime Prefecture, a large kite crashed into a stall at a kite-flying festival, injuring one person. Strong winds were the culprits in this mishap.
• In another recreational tragedy, two men were killed and a woman went missing after a jet ski accident in Chiba’s Tone River.
• A 61-year-old tea ceremony instructor and her 95-year-old mom drowned when their car crashed into a reservoir in Hiroshima Prefecture.

WHAT RECESSION?

• As part of its expansion drive, US-based clothing retailer Forever 21 said it plans to open ten shops per year in Japan.
• The labor ministry announced that for the first time in 22 months, workers around the country saw their wages rise.
• Thanks to “firm production of automobiles for North America and Asia,” industrial output also rose.
• Fujitsu said it enjoyed a net profit of ¥93.09 billion during the past year, while Mitsubishi Electric said its group net profit “jumped 2.3-fold.”
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Saitama Man Building Huge Garden in Lithuania” (via Kyodo). Runner-up: “Unpopular School Starts Night Classes” (via Daily Yomiuri Online)

Compiled from reports by Japan Today, The Japan Times, International Herald Tribune/The Asahi Shimbun, The Mainichi Daily News, The Tokyo Reporter, The Daily Yomiuri, Reuters, AP and Kyodo.